


Lover Man (oh where can you be)

by billspilledquill



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Canon Backstory, Canon Compliant, Canonical Love for Winnie the Pooh Must Not Go Wasted, F/M, Gen, Rated T for Trashmouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: “I think you’re hot that way."“What way?”“The middle-aged, bright-eyed act that consists of caring for people you don’t really care about in order to fill the deep and empty void inside your heart. It’s very charming.”"Oh, fuck off."
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	Lover Man (oh where can you be)

**Author's Note:**

> TW for brief mention of pedophilia & past abuse. It's the backstory that the show offered but didn't have enough time to explore about the Priest. Although I think the "it'll pass" summarized everything pretty well. Enjoy!

_Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise._  
_Jeremiah 17:14_

> * * *

He was fully ten when he realized that girls of his age were beautiful (usually observed three yards away with a two-thousand-page book in his hands). His brother told him so, despite being ten years older; had whispered so in a Church (reading Winnie and fucking _Piglet_ , oh God, _what a darling)_ , and it was with the constant whispering and _Ave Maria_ that he first realized how fucked up it was. 

As for the other things (Mother’s shouts, the bruises, the silence, and whatever the fuck that is Da’s fashion sense), they were much easier to guess the fuckery behind it. God help him (and God did). At forty years of age (with middle-age crisis that strike in full swing), he began to picture God as a sexy woman with small tits and a crooked nose.

* * *

  
_God help me_. Little him prayed half-heartedly when the shouting began. It ceased blessedly (thank you), and little him crawled back to the bed that was his whole world and then some and opened A. A. Milne when the shouts with renewed vigour (since miracles can only last so long while Mother’s voice, he suspected, was god-fucking immortal). 

“Don’t be a sissy,” his brother whined, because they shared a bed and because he was an arsehole.

(It was dangerous, sometimes, because while they were poor and had no money for a second bed and while he believed that there was a shred of decency left in his twenty-year-old brother not to do anything but only snore like depraved person, he sometimes feared the ghost of a touch, of a word, of _something_. But it was okay because he didn’t sleep, when his brother snored like a trunk, which was every time; he felt safe, and he didn’t sleep.) 

“Why are you so obsessed with drawings?” His brother continued (he always did; he always let him). “I know you can read better than that. I have seen you do it— reading other stuff. The long ones— the wordy ones.”

“Piglet is nice.”

“Yeah, but why? These are for children.”

“ _You_ like children.”

“You never hear a word I say, don’t you?” He didn’t look amused (he never did). “You never listen to us. It’s like you’re in another world. They really ought to lock you up if one day you because one of those people. You have that look,” and he taunted (he let him). “You really do.”

Little him thought about little Piglet and how little Piglet can slip into a pocket. And he thought, _God help me,_ and the next day the family confronted little Maria’s parents that looked very, very angry and on the verge of tears and his brother left for a few days, away from the house. (But he still couldn’t sleep because the snore wasn’t there, not anymore. And it wasn’t safe. It was fucking stupid because the house became quiet after Mother left and he was so fucking scared and his fucking head wouldn’t shut up and _Ave Maria_ and God was the girl he kept staring at during lunch breaks and _God help me, help me, help me_ ). 

* * *

Her nose was fascinating. She looked sideways and stared and her presence would disappear along with her thoughts and there was something in that look so utterly reminiscent of his own that he had to ask her to stop (it was a little like seeing avocadoes in someone else’s salad; avocadoes were sacred and should not be in anyone’s plates except his own. It was also a little like love, but that’s beside the point). 

But he would sometimes take advantage of that to look at her nose— it had an odd shape, a lovely, quiet reminder that she was still human when she really, really smiled; it was beautiful. 

“Promise?” She would ask. 

“Promise.” He would say. 

Sometimes he would make her laugh (her laughter was mostly for show, like everything else about her that was lovely but not quite, but when they laugh together, he would fall, and it would sound genuine enough and good enough to pretend that he was too). Sometimes he would think he would fall in love with her and God couldn’t even help him because God looked exactly like her (and so when he said he was fucked over by God if anything like _this_ happened; it was in more ways than one). 

Something like a plan that went:

> 1\. Talk with her (not too much about the miscarriage and more about feelings). 
> 
> 2\. Give her the Bible (not too much about feelings and more about the miscarriage). 
> 
> 3\. ???
> 
> 4\. Profit!

Profit meant that she would leave him alone. Not, like, money-wise, because God knows (and God knew) that being a priest was a piss-poor job and gave him only enough to buy canned gin and tonic (unlike the real thing that Mother and Da shared after a tough tennis match of shouting that always ended 0:0 and yet never called it love) and the comfort that let him go to bed at nine thirty but never really sleep either. Profit was her nose never touching his, and profit was knowing her and loving her and nothing else. 

She was everything and everything was so much; God helped him today by whispering in his ears that he should listen, and should love, and should give, but never too much.

(And she was the textbook, arse-licking, over-the-top definition of too much. Her and her nose and her laughter and everything that God looked in his book.)

 _God help me_ , he tried again as Call Me Maybe unhelpfully ringed in his ears at an ungodly (pardon the blasphemy, fucking Hell, he _should_ mind his language) hour at a priest that was not looking for God, but not exactly for a (lovely, beautiful, wonderful) woman he just met a few hours ago either. 

* * *

Da was tending the soft, fading bruises when he said _it’ll pass_. Mother said that when she marked them on his skin; his brother did when he got caught for being an arsehole. As if the fleeting nature of the human experience was family-owned property (along with the stifling emotional response to anything close to heart, the inability to love hard enough to matter, and the no-good, ghastly thing that they pretend was a fashion sense), he embraced it almost like he embraced God. 

It helped him as much as God did too. Priesthood was clothes (good), Scriptures (O.K.), marriages (bad) and knowing that all will pass if only God wouldn’t (still deciding on the connotation). _It’ll pass_ was something he said mostly to his (now dead) dog when she tried to get her food, but sometimes it was on other occasions as well. (Mother’s funeral wasn’t one of them. Because she will never pass. She never exactly passed, in his mind, in God’s, in the thrilling sort of way that his bruises scarred later on and when Da stopped tending his wounds.) 

_It’ll pass_ , he tested on his tongue, knowing that she will come, and he will love her, and _it’ll pass_. He wished he had pride, but not the kind in the Bible, where it was bad. Something like I love you would suffice, (which he never heard it on anyone’s lips except every teary-rewatch of _Titanic_ ). 

Something like _you jump I jump_ or any romantic bullshit he knew he can say but can never mean because his head hurt every time he did and all he can think of was _Ave Maria_ (Mother’s hands on another woman; the screams), her smile (Da’s gin spilled over the kitchen counter like blood until he failed to recognize the difference) and her (lovely, beautiful, wonderful) nose (and: _I need God to tell me what to do which is kind of worse because God tells me to love and I believe it is the right way because God listened. God help me, I think I love you. God save me because I am fucked, and fucking Hell it’s going to pass the same way it always did. Why the fuck does it always have to pass?)_

G&T tasted foul, and God couldn’t help it because swallowing one’s own snort and tears cannot be pleasant under any circumstances, even when he had a little more than the ordinary guidance (which was God, who would for some curious reasons would always hide in paintings and drop whether God felt like it; sometimes it was annoying when he tried to read a specific type of fiction for a specific reason which required a bedroom and some alone time). 

_It’ll pass_ (why?). Her unanswered questions, her pregnant glances at a place he knew full well, her everything: _it’ll pass_ (how?). 

He finished the can in one go, ready for the next. 

* * *

“I think you’re fucked up,” she said, bold after the sex; the only time, he suspected, that she was telling the truth. (Her face clear and eyes wide and her smile a fucking salvation.) “Even before you got fucked over by life,” she added, “and me.”

“Only you,” he promised, then relented. “And God, I suppose.”

She laughed. It was genuine; it was unsettling. 

“Promise?” She asked.

“Promise.” He said. 

Her lips were red and bruised when he kissed her; for a moment he was afraid of being someone else (Da) in somewhere else (the small, dark room where Da kept Ma sometimes) and he shook his head. 

“I think you’re hot that way,” she finished for him (he let her; he always did).

“What way?”

“The middle-aged, bright-eyed act that consists of caring for people you don’t really care about in order to fill the deep and empty void inside your heart. It’s very charming.”

“Oh, fuck off.” (Fuck _me_. I’m _fucked_ ). And he kissed her. And again. And again. And God help him (he did), he loved her, and he wanted her gone, preferably with a bright smile and a flick of her nose and someone who will love her without the divine hanging in every picture and had temper tantrums whenever he did something slightly out of reach. 

But he was desperate, so he kissed her again and again and again until the small painting of Jesus fell in a swoop down to the floor and broke into tiny pieces (thank you). He made a run for it.

* * *

Little him would sit inside the bus stop when no one was watching, thinking that he can go away and become an actor or run a drug cartel in the big, bad city of London. Big him worked in a children’s hospital and talked to the kids about things he half-believed. 

The first time he saw God was at the emergency room, where a baby was brought here after a house fire. The skin was badly brunt, and big him prayed and thought that God must help her (he did) because there was nothing more unfair than a baby’s suffering, that he was ready to bring those sufferings to himself if he meant for her recovery. The baby survived, and God kept the promise (thank you). 

Little him was dragged to his room when Da found him at the bus stop with all his belongings in a tidy bag and locked him there for a week. 

* * *

She touched his neck and for a time he felt like she was going to hold here (and maybe squeeze), until she didn’t and simply kissed the nape of his neck and cuddled closer. He didn’t know what to do. (And God answered with a disappointing sigh and frowning lips). 

God help him (he did). Her skin was rough in some places and her eyes were wet. They were at the bus stop and _I love you too_. She had always known what to do, he thought. She always knew what to do better than any of them, that was why she found it was so hard. He said he was going, and her eyes were grateful. 

_Promise?_ He asked in a glance. 

_Promise._ She blinked, and the world turned to its axis and rested on her lids. _I fucking promise._

So he walked away (and the camera stopped following him, too). 


End file.
